Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein Profile

Lionel
“Rusty” Bernstein was one of many unsung hero’s of the South African
liberation struggle. Being white, he always had the choice of living a
comfortable life style in the land of apartheid or risking everything in the
struggle for equality. He chose the latter and as a result, he became an
enemy of the apartheid state and suffered the consequences.

He was arrested many times and twice
charged with treason. The Security Police constantly raided his home, he
was served with many orders that restricted his work as well as his personal
freedom, and eventually he was placed under house arrest. This meant he was
a prisoner in his own home, his own jailer, allowed out between 6am and 6pm
Monday to Friday and was required to report to the police every day between
12 and 2. He was tried for treason alongside
Nelson
Mandela and other members of the
African National Congress
(ANC) in the infamous Rivonia Trial. However, his influence ran much
deeper than public awareness of these events. Until 1994, when the first
free elections took place, he continued to work for the liberation of South
Africa and he never renounced his principles or beliefs.

Rusty was born in Durban, in
1920; the youngest of four children of European émigrés. Orphaned at eight
years old, he was brought up by relatives. These early disruptions to his
family life were compounded when he was sent to finish his education at a
boys’ boarding school. Hilton College, a private school, was the South
African equivalent of Eton or Harrow.

He excelled academically but hated the way in which the school was run.
Almost by chance, he took part in a debate on the future of civilisation.
Through this and the influence of a teacher, his interest in history and
politics was aroused. He has written about this with his typical humour in
his book
Memory
Against Forgetting.

After matriculating, he returned to Johannesburg where he started work at
an architect’s office, while studying architecture part-time at the
University of the Witwatersrand.
After qualifying in 1936, he worked full-time as an architect.

In 1937 he joined the Labour League of Youth and later joined the
Communist Party where he soon played a leading role. For one year he forsook
architecture to work as a full-time Party official and Secretary of the
Johannesburg District of the Communist Party. In March 1941, he married
Hilda, an émigré
from Britain, whom he had met in the Labour League of Youth. She had risen
to prominence in local politics. It was to be a life-long relationship.

That year he volunteered for the
South African army
and later served as a gunner in North Africa and Italy. He was repatriated
and discharged from the army at the beginning of 1946, to be reunited with
his wife and small daughter Toni, the first of four children. While he was
in Italy, Hilda had been elected to the Johannesburg City Council (by an
all-white electorate) where she
served for three years. She was a fluent public speaker, later described by
Anthony Sampson as “a South African version of the Spanish party’s La Passionaria.”

During the strike of
African miners in 1946, he produced the strike bulletin; the mine
workers newsletter. After the strike both he and his wife were arrested
together with others and charged with sedition. They were ultimately
convicted of aiding an illegal strike and received suspended sentences.

Over the next quarter century, he wrote extensively for a number of
journals, including Liberation and the South African newspaper the Guardian.
He also edited Fighting Talk, a paper for
ex-servicemen. This carried the same message as his other writings; that
South Africa was approaching its last chance to make a peaceful transition
to democracy. Fighting Talk became a banned publication and very few copies
remain anywhere.

In his book, Rusty writes: "The demand for written material - for
handbills, pamphlets, press releases, and policy statements from all radical
organisations was insatiable." He contributed articles to a number of other
political journals; and was responsible for much of the propaganda issued by
the liberation movement. During this time he also wrote extensively for the
African Communist and Fighting Talk. Once he was banned, he continued to
write under pseudonyms.

In 1950, the Communist Party was banned. All those listed as its members
became subject to various restrictions, including a ban on being published.
Some time later, Rusty took part with others in forming an underground
Communist Party. He was also prominent in forming the Congress of Democrats, an
organisation for whites that could co-operate with the African National
Congress, which at that time was restricted to black membership only. This
Congress Alliance drew in radical trade unions, and many other non-racial
political organisations.

In 1954, the ANC called together its allies to a joint meeting in Natal.
This included the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats,
the South African Congress of Trade Unions, and the Coloured Peoples’
Congress. It was at this historic meeting that it was decided to convene a
"Congress of the People" where a
Freedom Charter would be adopted.

Rusty played a major part on the committee organising the Congress, and
worked very closely with
Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo.
Although often credited with the drafting of the Freedom Charter, his own
memoirs dispel this. He was actually given the responsibility of drafting
the Freedom Charter from the thousands of demands coming in from all
over the country. His written words became a rallying call for those
struggling for national liberation from that time on; "Let Us Speak of
Freedom. South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white." The
Freedom Charter became the basic document for the ANC for the next 40 years.

By 1953, both he and his wife became subject to bans and restrictions
that prohibited them from belonging to or taking part in the activities of
numerous organisations including non-political bodies such as Parent Teacher
Associations. They were prohibited from communicating with any other banned
person - although Rusty and his wife Hilda were given a special judicial
dispensation permitting them to communicate!

At the end of 1956, Rusty and 150 others were arrested and charged with
Treason. The infamous
Treason Trial lasted for more than 4 years after which all the accused
were found not guilty and discharged.

In 1960, the
Sharpeville massacre took place, and he and his wife were both among
those arrested and detained under the State of Emergency that followed. He
was not released until five months later when the state of emergency was
lifted. In 1962, he was placed under house arrest and allowed out only on
weekdays between 6:00am and 6:00pm but had to report to the police every day.

His covert ANC and South African Communist Party activities led up to the
police raid on
Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, where he and 10 other prominent ANC leaders
were arrested on 11th July 1963. Rusty was held in solitary
confinement under the notorious Ninety Days detention law. At the end of
ninety days, he was charged together with Nelson Mandela and others, in what
became known as the Rivonia Trial. At the end of the trial, the remaining
men were all found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rusty was the only one found not guilty and he was discharged.

He was immediately re-arrested while leaving the dock and later released
on bail. Shortly after his release, the police came to arrest Hilda, but she
managed to escape from their home and went into hiding. They then decided to
leave South Africa for the sake of their children, who would be orphaned for
a very long time if both of them were sent to jail. Also, their activities
were now so circumscribed, they felt they had become a danger to all who
associated with them.

They left their children in the care of their eldest daughter Toni and
her husband, and crossed the border to Botswana on foot. Their flight across
the border and subsequent journey is described in Hilda’s book
“The World That Was Ours.”

Rusty and Hilda eventually made their way into Zambia. Despite Zambia
being well on the way to independence and the ANC being well respected by
the new incoming authorities, they were declared prohibited immigrants by
the British authorities. They then travelled overland to Tanzania and
eventually to England, where their children joined them one by one. Rusty
worked as an architect in London.

Despite leaving the country of his birth, he continued to work tirelessly
for the abolition of apartheid without drawing a salary from the ANC,
preferring to earn his living independently. In 1987, he conducted a series
of seminars for the ANC in Moscow, on the history of South Africa’s
liberation struggles. This was to “men and women of the Soweto generation,
training to be guerrilla fighters.”

He returned to South Africa for four months in 1994 for the first
post-apartheid elections and worked in the ANC press office during this
time, with particular responsibility for ensuring mass white participation
in the first non-racial elections to take place in South Africa.

In 1995 he travelled to Italy to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of
the liberation of an area of Italy from the Nazi occupation and represented
the South African regiment that fought there.

In 1998, both Rusty and Hilda were awarded honorary degrees from the
University of Natal for their role in helping to bring democracy to South
Africa. This followed the publication of Rusty’s acclaimed personal account
of the unwritten history of South African politics between 1938 and 1964.

His critical thinking and writing skills continued to be used long after
his active role in politics and some of these are reproduced here.

Perhaps the importance of Rusty's contribution to the new South Africa
can be judged by things that happened after his death. On the day he died,
Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, personally called Hilda to pass
on his condolences. The next week, there was a minutes silence in both South
African houses of parliament and three respected UK papers published large
obituaries. The South African Presidents wife flew to London for the
funeral. The week following the funeral, Nelson Mandela and his
wife paid a personal visit to Rusty's wife.

Rusty Bernstein died at his home on June 23rd 2002, aged 82.
He was survived by Hilda, his four children, and by grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.